From the Civil War to the Five-year Plans

Abstract

The Russian Revolution in 1917 and the Civil War that followed between 1918 and 1921 are usually described from the centre of events — Petrograd and Moscow. This book, however, focuses on how the city of Cheliabinsk and its surroundings changed before World War I and on the conditions in which the new Soviet power was established in the Southern Urals. The takeover of power in November 1917 by the Red Guards and Workers’ soviets created an unstable situation. There were profound conflicts with other groups in society — merchants, peasants and, most of all, the Cossacks in Orenburg. Many decisive moments in the Civil War took place in the Southern Urals. The New Economic Policy (NEP) in the 1920s seemed for a short time to have created a model for the recovery of the country and the evolution of a ‘mixed economy’. Ambitious investment targets in the five-year plans set in 1928–1929 changed the situation. Stalin and the leaders of the Bolshevik Party opted for the swift collectivisation of agriculture, which changed the Ural countryside profoundly. The ‘flight from the countryside’ to the cities was a major factor in determining the character of the new industrial sites in the 1930s. In less than ten years, as a result of great effort and much suffering for the population, a new heavy industry was created in the Urals that exploited the rich natural resources in the region.KeywordsCommunist PartyMilitary DictatorshipSecret PoliceRussian RevolutionSpecial SettlementThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.